How Will Coronavirus Affect Your Rental?

The short answer of course is we don’t really know, but it may not all be bad for everyone.

We don’t know if Coronavirus will fizzle out in China through amazing government shutdowns and controls.

Alternatively because it can’t be detected in people who are infected, it may propagate undetected into countries all around the world, where new infections will break out. The data is leaning towards the latter.

Unprecedented uncertainty
What we have here is unprecedented uncertainty and fear, far worse than the SARS outbreak. Travellers are cancelling or postponing their overseas holidays.

In some destinations the majority of travellers were from China and the outlook for rental owners is bleak.

In many developed countries where people are well off enough to travel overseas, they are likely to postpone their holidays. For example in US, EU, Australia where most of my readers are located, there will be less outbound travel to external countries but travelers will still want to take holidays and many will choose to holidays safely at home.

These two trends will tend balance each other out – less overseas holidays, more local holidays.

While it is still early days, after the initial shock drop in bookings from Chinese travellers, local travellers are starting to book again locally to take their place. If you are totally dependent on Chinese travellers, now might be a time to diversify.

Remind past guests of the benefits of staying locally

If you have a newsletter, now is the time to remind your past guests that overseas travel is potentially risky, and local holidays are totally safe. That is what I have told my past guests in my newsletter with encouraging results. In past weeks 11 of 13 days have been booked by locals via my newsletter.

You don’t have you don’t have a newsletter to past guests?

It’s never too late to start. Just give it a go or to make it easy you can read chapters 23 24 25 of my book Vacation Rental Mastery. You can buy it here on Amazon

Hang in there, it is not all gloom and doom. Make a fuss of your past local guests and they may just help keep your business on an even keel.